Strategies

Epilepsy and Learning Challenges

Most children with epilepsy have similar intellectual abilities to children without epilepsy. However, children with epilepsy have a greater chance of experiencing learning challenges than their peers.

Common Learning Challenges for Children with Epilepsy

Paying attention and concentrating

Understanding instructions

Using information

Describing things to other people

Remembering things

Working out how to do something new

Organizing thoughts or tasks

Feeling you have no energy to do things

Feeling muddled or confused

Feeling sad or tearful

Feeling short tempered or grumpy

Working out sums

Writing or copying figures

Developmental delays

Causes

Frequency of seizures

•A child who is experiencing frequent seizures, may not fully recover between seizures

Location of seizure activity in the brain.

When seizures are focused in a particular area of the brain, they may also affect functions controlled in that part of the brain.

Type of seizures

When a child loses consciousness during a seizure, their mental functioning can be disrupted for up to several days

Some children appear to be seizure-free but may be experiencing epileptic discharges in the brain, called interictal discharges or sub-clinical seizures

Interictal discharges may produce restlessness, distractibility, inability to focus, decreased capacity for taking in new information, and behavioural disturbances.

The underlying neurological problem causing the seizures can also impact learning and behaviour.

Other related conditions

There are a number of other conditions that are more likely to occur is people with epilepsy than the general population, including Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Learning Disabilities, and Autism Spectrum Disorders.

* For strategies to help a child with attention deficits, n), and Helping Children with Organization and Planning.

Adapted from Children and Learning (Epilepsy Toronto) and Cognitive, Behavioural and Social Co-Morbidities in Children with Medically Refractory Epilepsy (Mary Lou Smith).

Additional Sources: Canadian Epilepsy Alliance. Learning through Storms: Epilepsy and Learning. I Elliott, L Lach, M Smith. (2004). Epilepsy Impact on the Life of a Child. Lumina, Fall, 4-5.